remix

“Individualized Learning” has become a commonly used buzzword in education. But what exactly is “Individualized Learning” and how is it relevant to the day-to-day classroom?

Individualized learning can be described as the process of learning within the classroom that allows individual students to progress through classroom material at their own pace and typically through their own methods. Often times, this means students are self-directed and have different means of accomplishing learning goals based on individual abilities, preferences and learning needs. This does not mean that standards or curriculum are different for each student. Instead, individualized learning simply takes a student’s individual learning style and needs into account when planning activities necessary for the student to learn the required/state-mandated material in a way that best suites them as an individual and unique learner.

To better understand the buzzword, I created this remix of “individualized learning” with a variant audience in mind. My intentions are that people of all different walks of life (whether teachers or not) can understand the meaning of individualized learning through my one-minute remix. Because my audience is not simply aimed at teachers or teacher-candidates, I thought it best to incorporate both video of students interacting in individualized learning while an experienced adult audibly explains the process, as well as, video that explains the concept through appropriate written text and engaging, but subtle musical accompaniment.

To begin my process, I searched for a main video to use as my inspiration of the buzzword, “individualized learning”. I chose to use the “Personalized Learning” video (reference found below) as the outline for my remix project. It seemed to me that parts of this video accurately described individualized learning while other parts did not. So, to begin my remix video, I found a video of a woman relaying the definition of individualized while visually displaying the definition in text. After the definition portion, the remix continues with subsequent contrasting examples of a traditional classroom (which most viewers are likely to be familiar with) vs. a classroom incorporating individualized learning. Because I wanted my viewers to see an individualized learning classroom in action, I chose to incorporate two portions of an Edutopia video. In between the two portions, my original “Personalized Learning” video displays examples of the type of learning and activities learners are to experience when participating individualized learning. While these examples are displayed, a textbox appears to the Twitter hashtag “#individualizedlearning” encouraging viewers to engage in further learning and research of the buzzword. At the end of the video, I also incorporate two web addresses for viewers to read more on the topic. Although my original “Personal Learning” video includes audio, I found the music to be too-fast paced and not conducive to reading text and absorbing information. For that reason, I muted the original audio and added “Hover II” by Andrew Bird as the background audio for my remix.